


Come On, Sweet Catastrophe

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisysous, F/M, Sousy, dousy, post-7x09, whateverTF this ship is called i have FEELINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25568917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: post-7x09. Because Daisy’s got some stuff to work through."She’s had countless extra time to try and figure him out, but when, in the midst of all this chaos, did he learn to read her so well?"
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson & Daniel Sousa, Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Comments: 20
Kudos: 259





	Come On, Sweet Catastrophe

_A/N: post-7x09 dousy (sousy? daisysous?) angst and talking and a little bit of sweetness. I wrestled with this one, but I think I like the way it turned out.  
_

_Title from[“Hurricane”](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhXTwi0_q5bE&t=NzlhMjI1NjQ4YzMxNzkyYzBlYTU4OTAxMWVkOWJiY2E5NDU1MDgxNix5VlZZWFFLWg%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftheshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F624879155967918080%2Fagents-of-shield-fic-come-on-sweet-catastrophe&m=1&ts=1595931316) by Something Corporate, because yes, I was an aughts emo kid and yes, “you don’t do it on purpose, but you make me shake” was a line written for Daisy Johnson._

**Come On, Sweet Catastrophe**

She and Coulson sit there with Enoch for what feels like forever. Even after he’s gone, even after they’re out of danger, even after Mack sends the all clear over the comms, they just sit there in silence.

She had told him, however many loops ago, how sure she was that they’d figure it out. She should have known it would go like this. They’re not that lucky. There’s no victory without consequence these days, not when the stakes get higher every time she looks up.

Sousa is the first of the team to get to them, of course he is. She can’t even pretend that she’s confused about why anymore. She knows now, just like she knows how frightened he looks when he’s about to die.

“Daisy!” 

He says her name when he sees her slumped on the floor, and looking up at him is enough to push forward the tears that have been threatening to fall.

She’s not sure who moves first, but she’s reaching for him as he’s crouching to help her to her feet and it feels more natural than it should when she turns and buries her face in the crook of his neck. 

“You did it,” he whispers, and it’s not as comforting as she hoped it might be. 

She nods against his shoulder, taking in a deep breath as a fresh wave of grief and worry threatens to take her knees out from under her. “But, Enoch…“

“I know.” Daisy loosens her grip to see May and Mack are already seeing to the body.

“Why did he-”

“It was the only way.” Coulson answers before she can finish the question — even though she’s not entirely sure it’s the one she was trying to ask.

Deke nods in agreement, swiping at his cheeks with a jacket sleeve. Simmons can’t meet her eyes.

Suddenly, inside her, the sadness begins to crystallize into something darker. Coulson was right, it’s a special kind of devastation to be the one carrying the memories of all the failed loops. It feels almost like her childhood, packing her lonely memories into those flimsy black trash bags when it came time to move on to the next home. She can blink and see Mack going blind, Simmons gasping for breath, Sousa falling to the ground right in front of her. 

And they’ll all leave her again, Enoch had warned with his last breaths. A bitter, angry dread pushes its way up her throat, blurring her vision and crawling across her skin, and an old familiar instinct returns.

She pushes Sousa back a step and turns for the door, ignoring his confused look and the way he calls her first name again as she leaves without a word.

* * *

The thing about this ship, she’s learned over the years, is that there’s really nowhere to run away. She makes it to the loading bay before setting down in an exhausted huff, and when Sousa follows moments later, taking the seat next to her, it feels like deja vu. Daisy remembers the fire in his eyes when he talked about taking on HYDRA single-handedly if he had to, remembers how it had ignited something in her own chest.

She remembers how he had told her time wasn’t the only thing he’d lost in the fight so far. She remembers wanting to tell him that she knows that feeling too.

Now, he just sits in silence, waiting for her to make the first move. When she finally does speak, she wonders if she surprises them both.

“When all of this is over, if we survive,” she asks, even as the odds of that seem lower than ever after today, “would you want to go back?”

“What do you mean?”

“Back to 1955. Back to your life.”

“I-I couldn’t. I’m dead, remember?” There’s a crinkle in the corner of his eyes, but his gaze is serious and she can tell he’s trying to feign a playful response to put her at ease.

She’s had countless extra time to try and figure him out, but when, in the midst of all this chaos, did he learn to read her so well?

“You work for S.H.I.E.L.D.” She adds a sarcastic eye roll for good measure, and hates herself immediately for it. “I think they could figure out how to keep that secret. Or you could have a whole new life, travel the world, I don’t know.”

“Why are you asking me this?”

It’s a fair question, and one for which she has no good answer. Maybe she’s selfishly trying to get him to reveal even more of himself to her. Maybe she’s trying to push him away proactively, to blow this up before it can even really begin. 

“Just wondering, if you could. You said it yourself, there were some goodbyes…”

“ _Daisy_.” It’s sharp, but not angry. He knows what she’s up to, even if he has no idea why. Even if she’s not entirely sure herself.

She sighs, and looks down at where her fingernails are dug into her thighs. 

“You don’t call me Agent Johnson.”

“No,” he answers, immediately back on an even keel. “I guess I don’t.”

“You call the others by their last names,” she ventures, forcing herself to meet his eyes again.

“Yeah, I do.” This time the crinkle is genuine, and her heart gives a warning thud in her chest.

She wants to tell him everything. How many times she woke to find him at her bedside. How he’d sacrificed himself without a second thought, trusting her completely. How he had answered so simply when she asked why he cared.

( _“Because you don’t._ ” Not a moment’s hesitation, nothing ulterior about it. The same way he’s had her back since the first day they met.)

She wants to tell him that she’s ashamed for only working up the courage to kiss him after she knew what it felt like to lose him.

But she decides to tell him something else instead.

“HYDRA destroyed my family,” she says softly. Out of the corner of her eye she watches his right hand flex into a fist. “They tortured and killed my mother, and drove my father mad, and left me alone in this world.”

She takes a deep shuddering breath and purposely doesn’t meet his eyes. “S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me a purpose, and a home, and if it’s all falling apart, I don’t know what I…”

_I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know who I’m going to be. I don’t know how I’m going to survive._

The violent voice in her head is silenced, though, when Sousa reaches out gently to take her hand in his.

“Did you learn something, in one of the loops?” he asks. She has to stop herself from scoffing — if only he knew — but she doesn’t pull away. It feels like she’s mere moments from coming completely apart, and that’s the last thing they have time for right now.

“Enoch, as he died, he warned us that this would be our last mission together,” she tells him. “I can’t even imagine a world where that’s true.”

Sousa hesitates but only for a moment.

“Well, it’s not like we haven’t changed the future plenty already.” Of course he still has faith. Of course he’s still unflinchingly in her corner. It shouldn’t surprise her, of all people. She’s the one that watched him wake up in that uncomfortable chair time and time again, ready to give her any support she needed.

“But Daisy,” he continues, “you’re not giving yourself enough credit. For as much as S.H.I.E.L.D. made you, you made it what it is, too.”

His eyes are just as earnest as she expects them to be when she finally looks up. And it feels like her whole rib cage splinters when he gives her hand a little squeeze and continues.

“I know your type. You’re the kind of person who fights tooth and nail to hold onto the things she loves. If you have any say at all, you’re not going to lose this family.”

It’s impossibly unfair to hold against him things that he hasn’t even said in this timeline, but she can’t help it. It’s the only part of his whole lovely sentiment that she actually hears clearly. _“I know your type.”_ It echoes in her eardrums, throbs at the base of her skull.

It was perhaps the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to her, his little lost speech about being there to pick her back up, and it makes her ache to think about how it didn’t really happen at all. Not for him, at least.

But he’s still sitting here, isn’t he? He chased her down to hold her hand and look at her with those earnest eyes. It’s a look that tells her he’d give that speech all over again if she asked him to.

She wonders what Peggy Carter felt when he looked at her like that.

“Did you love her?”

It is absolutely, categorically, not at all the question she planned on asking him. Probably ever. But it’s the one that comes out.

He blinks, and then shrugs, pulling his hand away, and she realizes: this is what it looks like when he’s shaken. If she could reach out and take it back, she would in a second.

“I, uh- I don’t know,” he admits. “I think so. We didn’t really get a chance to…”

Now he’s the one who won’t meet her eyes, and it’s agonizing. He rolls with the punches so well, but Daisy should have known that there would be a breaking point. He lost 30 years — his whole life — in a blink, and the fact that he doesn’t dwell on it publicly is no excuse for her carelessness.

He even told her, back in that speech she can’t forget, that things weigh heavier on him than he lets on — and she blew past any semblance of propriety and pressed a thumb into his metaphorical bruises.

But before she can tell him any of this as part of a much-deserved apology, he’s standing to leave, rubbing absently at the knee joint of his new bionic before he does.

“You really should rest some more after… all of that,” he says softly, casting a quick, inscrutable glance at her as he goes. “Just for a little. I’m here if you need me.”

He says that, but then he’s gone. Down the hall towards his makeshift bunk. She wants badly to follow him, can feel the selfish ache in her fortified bones. But she’s not sure she deserves that kind of validation.

* * *

In another life, another time, Daisy’s sure she would stay behind and wallow in the callous way she’d let her own emotions step her so clearly over the line. In this one, where she’s ever cognizant of just how precious each moment can be, she gives him five, maybe ten minutes.

Thankfully, his door is still open. He’s sat on his bunk, fiddling idly with his wristwatch, and when he looks up he doesn’t seem surprised to see her.

“I shouldn’t have-“

They say it at the same time. It tugs at the corner of her mouth, but there’s no way she’s letting him apologize to her, so she speaks first — telling him another thing that’s true, another thing that’s been weighing on her mind.

“I’m afraid that if I go to sleep, I’m going to wake up in the loop again.”

He doesn’t answer right away, just pats the bunk next to him, and she doesn’t hesitate. 

“Was there anything good in any of them?” he asks as she sits down beside him. “Other than the last one where you, you know, saved all of our lives and the entire human race? Anything else worth remembering?”

She turns to watch him as he speaks. She’s closer here than she was in the bay, and she thinks she could lose a few good minutes remembering what the salt and pepper on his temple or the line of his jaw or the unbuttoned collar of his dress shirt look like up close.

“Yeah.” Her voice comes out thick, and she has to clear her throat. “Yeah there were some moments.”

Sousa looks down at her as he waits for her to continue and the softness and trust in his gaze is another thing worth remembering. 

“In one of them, I asked you why you care so much,” she tells him, readying herself for more honesty. “Why you’re always willing to help, no questions asked. Why you had my back right from the start.”

“And?”

Part of her had worried he was making some kind of comparison, Daisy realizes, but she knows now that it’s not about who she is to him, or who Peggy Carter was. It’s about the kind of man Daniel Sousa is, and seemingly always has been.

She leans back against the wall behind them and he follows. She tilts her head against his shoulder. Again, he follows, leaning softly against her.

“And you told me,” she answers, sure he already knows somehow.

“Good,” he says. Daisy can feel his mouth curve into a smile, and it feels almost more intimate than kissing him. “I’m glad I did.”

“Yeah?”

Her eyes feel heavy as the adrenaline from earlier finally starts to dissipate, and she wonders if she could actually fall asleep here, upright, but next to him. It’s the safest she’s felt in a long time.

“Yeah,” Daniel answers. “And there’s something else you should know, too.”

“What’s that?” Daisy feels his hand wrap around hers again as she drifts off.

“When all of this is over, the only place I want to be is where you are.”

* * *

_A/N: Still having ALL the feelings about these two. Come yell with me about them on[Tumblr](https://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/post/624879155967918080/agents-of-shield-fic-come-on-sweet-catastrophe)!_


End file.
